So I'm building a monk type character who was raised in remote mountains away from modern society. No computers, no electricity, no running water - but still with access to things like metalworking, stonemasonry, carpentry, all those sorts of things.

Anyway, I took at look at the Uneducated negative quality, because it seems like it makes sense, right? "Unaware" for Technical skills, and for Academic Knowledge and Professional Knowledge skills without any ranks in them, and it costs double karma to gain ranks. Okie dokie, makes sense, yes?

The problem is that my character's backstory involves having learned how to live off the land and having the community be self-sufficient, being able to tend wounds and practice medicine, as well as crafting and forging various melee weapons - ideally to a reasonable degree of proficiency.

Unfortunately, these are all Technical skills, and they suffer the doubled costs. This means that after receiving a seemingly huge 20 BP for the Negative Quality, simply placing a bare minimum of 1 rank in First Aid, Medicine, and Armorer costs me 24 BP - meaning I actually lose points. It's the same whether you try to take three different skills, or just put three ranks in a single one, or any other combination of the sort.

How the heck does this make sense? Uneducated is supposedly representative not only of certain sapient critters that are essentially intelligent beasts, sure - but it is also meant to be used for groups like "Amazonian primitives, Luddite collectives, or NAN pinkskins". But how do you expect a "primitive society" to exist with literally zero ability to craft weapons and tend to the sick and wounded? And how can anyone expect a player to justify taking this Negative Quality when it literally costs them 20% more for three measly skill ranks than they get from the quality itself?

As it stands, it makes far more sense to just buy the few skills I want at normal cost, and leave the other skills I don't want at 0, roleplaying the difference. Taking the Uneducated quality literally costs you more BP than not taking it, and makes you unable to default, and makes buying ranks later twice as expensive. There is literally no upshot, and no rational reason to take it.

Can anyone suggest other reasonable alternatives? (Currently looking at Computer Illiterate and possibly Gremlins, but maybe there are others I missed that are more "inbetween" in terms of the extremes of the spectrum?)

~Umi

As an alternative change the skills slightly to more primitive forms, meaning you have some of the basics but more complex/modern techniques might still elude them and allow these limited forms to be purchased at the normal price.

First Aid becomes Basic Bandaging, so the person could treat cuts and scrapes, apply pressure to a cut, apply a tourniquet to stop blood loss, even manually push a bone back into place or splint a leg, but might not fully grasp/understand CPR or the Heimlich manuever or wouldn't be able to help someone with a crushed windpipe or deflated lung.

Medicine could become Homeopathy or something similar. So good old bloodletting with leeches (the slug form, not the PC vamp though the latter could work in a pinch) and various compounds to treat what ails you.

Armorer would just have a restriction on how far along the tech level was. So maybe he is fine working with leathers and some level of metalworking like bronze or iron, but maybe hasn't cracked the secret of steel yet (whether due to issues of balancing carbon or the village never had that hot a forge to work with) and while they may know how to make gunpowder (and might not even be the smokeless variety so expect lots of black clouds whenever they fire the homemade stuff) they won't know how to work the solid propellants that you would expect to see as standard in the 2070 caseless ammunition.

Advancement in the primitive form is fine as you hone those skills, but once the player down the road buys off the NQ, they could be applied at a reduced value to reflect your having some of the basics already toward costs.

So say you had built Homeopathy up to 4 and then bought off the NQ and decided to buy in Full Medicine, I would say Homeopathy 4 is roughly equivalent to Medicine 2-3 depending on the GM's call so you would either pay the cost of Medicine 3 or 4 to change over.

Just a thought.

Except in real life, where homeopathy 4 is equivalent to medicine 0.

he wants a basic style of medicine using poultices, herbal treatments, maybe even leeching to represent a more basic style of skill to fit his Unaware status and it does fit the bill nicely.

You can call the limited skill whatever you want, swap in traditional Chinese medicine if you prefer or Alt Medicine, we just used the name to distinguish it from the regular skill.

I only play SR3, so I'm unsure of the specifics with SR4 - but from the sounds of it, this isn't a version dependant question. I know in the SR3 companion it discussed developing a new edge in conjunction with the GM, working on the game effects and points value. I would suggest getting together with your GM to discuss...

From a very rough overview, I would describe a new edge/flaw/quality "Amish education", and define it as "unaware for any skill that relies on or uses skills beyond those possible with muscle / hand power". So blacksmithing using a traditional hammer and forge, carpentry using old fashioned hammer and chisel would be good. Blacksmithing using a CNC lathe/forge or carpentry using a power drill/router/planer would be bad. I would have throught you could limit the use and application of the skills quite nicely by looking at causes and effects too, in a fairly common sense matter. Using your medicine / first aid skill on someone suffering after a fall, stab or crush wound, possible and likely experienced in a primitive setting - full skill. Using medicine to heal a gunshot wound, effectively caused by some unknown method with no experience in the types of trauma or effects likely - take a penalty or half skill dice due to circumstances.

In terms of quality, and the likely use / effects this would have in a 6th world environment, if 20 points gets you "Uneducated", I would have though this would be right at about 15 points?

Homeopathy is not what you describe, at all. It has nothing to do with using poultices, herbal treatments and whatever. It doesn't work by any standard safe delusion or placebo effect.

You could indeed use "traditional medicine", or stuff like "phytotherapy", which indeed works. That should actually be considered a specialization of medicine.

I don't understand how they devised this flaw. In SR3, it only affected knowledge skills. I think the OP could talk to his GM about forgetting about this double cost for technical knowledge.

Think you meant dilution, but delusion certainly could well apply to actual homeopathy.

Which is why we said call it Homeopathy or something similar in the original post. Would have gone with Hedge Witch as that was traditionally more along these lines, but in SR with magic back that takes on a different meaning.

The problem with treating it as a specialization, which would normally work well for this, is he still has to have the base skill itself which the Unaware quality is penalizing with added costs.

Kren's idea has merit in that it could act as a limit on the skills in question, but again he will need to talk with his GM to find which way they want to go with this.

It is just one of those odd qualities that look cool in the book, but application raises all sorts of questions.

Better Solution -
Take the Incompetent Negative Quality for Computer, Cybercombat, Hardware, Aeronautical Mechanics, Software, and Cybertechnology.
Take Specialties in Armorer, Data Search, Medicine and First Aid to indicate Older Techniques prior to when Modern Technologies came onto the Scene.
Stick to Weapon Choices that are in line with your Training.
Most other skills are okay, to a point. Things like Industrial Mechanics have application in older technologies, for example.

Gremlins works well too.
Modern Technology and Gremlins are definitely at odds with each other (forcing one to avoid any interactions with such technology), yet your Older technology would work out just fine, dependent upon what Technology Level your GM regresses its application too.

Had a similar character in 4th (though sadly never got to play). That was the route I took.

Nope, of course I used delusion on purpose. Homeopathy is delusion. "It doesn't work by any standard safe dilution" doesn't mean anything.

But, then, it's still wrong. Someone being skilled in homeopathy has next to zero used to healing someone. So only the "or something similar" is valid. Hence, Homeopathy is invalid as a skill name for what the OP wants, something "similar" actually being working medicine could be used. I'm for "traditional medicine".

About the OP problem, I see two viewpoints:

- Either you keep the rules as is, and you consider that the object crafted by its community should require low skill test, since an uneducated community, even self sufficient, cannot produce melee weapons or medicine on par with modern society. That's quite fine, beautiful melee weapon used to be crafted by people whose it was the job to do so, with a lot of experience in it, before industrialization and education. But that's implying an armorer from today who could maintain a machine gun and even make some of its parts should be at ease making a sword, which could be debatable.

- Either you create a new category skill which can only be applied to the melee weapons the community produces.

The rules here are bad. The cherry on the cake is that animal handling, compass navigation, and artisan are covered by this too.

You could ask the GM to change the categories, for example adding the Vehicle Skills category and possibly automatics, longarms, or heavy weapons, while removing the skills you want.

Maybe a better way is just to make a whole new negative quality as per the suggestions in this thread.

Other than a custom-made flaw, I couldn't find anything that works better than the OP's original idea to take computer illiterate and maybe a level or two of gremlins. That kind of gives him what he wants - someone who can bandage up a wound just fine, but who will operate a medkit at a penalty, with a higher change of it malfunctioning.

Snakeoil salesmen gone legal.

Con 4.

Heh

Actually historically speaking Longarms should be the characters go to firearms skill seeing as they were the first man portable firearms produced.

Yeah, arquebuses in the West, and shǒu chòng or teppō in the East, and other regional variations thereof have been around a staggeringly long time. And a surprising number of monastic and religious orders became highly proficient in their use, both in Europe and in Asia.

~Umi

Are you comfortable with these being the same as future firearms. For your character concept, can you pick up any longarm and use them as you would these centuries old guns? Would Exotic Weapon be more appropriate for you? Is it equitable to the NQ points?

Well, it's a moot point, as my character is going to use either a sword or a naginata. (Although he is a Yamabushi, and they historically had TONS of guns. Fun fact, during the Warring State period, Japan produced more guns annually than all of Europe combined!)

If pressed for a rules judgement, I'd say that since the Street Sweeper "shotgun" in Arsenal uses Longarms, things like antique arquebuses and hand cannons should as well. In fact, I'd just copy the stats wholesale in most cases.

~Umi

Mystical healing via assensing and traditional methods has a special mention on augmentaion 123. Both the sidebar and long-term magical care.

Mostly its just extra dice to natural healing tests.

But potentially very powerful if street magic's Aid Enchantment is also used.


Uneducated suffers from the same problem uncouth does: Incompetent Etiquette replicates the aimed-for effect better than the more expensive and extra-hindering quality.